Masco Earnings Cheat Sheet: Faces Negative Housing Pressure

S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) component Masco Corporation (NYSE:MAS) reported its results for the first quarter. Masco Corporation manufactures and installs building and home improvement products including faucets, cabinets, architectural coatings and windows.

Results: Loss widened to $46 million (loss of 13 cents/diluted share) from a loss of $7 million (loss of 2 cents/share).

Revenue: Fell 4.3% to $1.77 billion YoY.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations:MAS fell short of the mean analyst estimate of a loss of 3 cents/share. Estimates ranged from a loss of 9 cents per share to a profit of 4 cents per share.

Quoting Management: “As anticipated, the trends impacting our business, including depressed new home construction, the deferral of “big ticket” repair and remodel activity and commodity cost pressures have continued into 2011. In the first quarter of 2011, our sales were down four percent. Excluding cabinet products that we are exiting, as previously announced, our sales would have been down just one percent compared to a relatively strong first quarter of 2010, which benefited from the homebuyer tax credit that expired in mid-2010. In addition, on that same basis, sales in February and March of 2011 were basically flat with 2010. Plumbing Products sales were strong in first quarter of 2011 compared to last year and we believe that our North American cabinet business and our installation business, while still depressed, were able to gain share sequentially, compared to fourth quarter of 2010. We continue to manage our cost structure aggressively across our business and we anticipate that actions we have taken, or expect to take, to drive productivity, cost reductions, supply chain efficiencies and price increases will offset the impact of commodity and energy cost increases and other cost inflations for full-year 2011,” said Masco’s CEO Tim Wadhams.

Key Stats: Over the last five quarters, revenue has fallen an average of 3.1% year over year. The biggest drop came in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal year, when revenue fell 7.2% from the year earlier quarter.